Published on 05 Feb 2025

Can Singapore Ever Move Beyond CMIO?

The Chinese, Malay, Indian, or Other (CMIO) framework’s roots can be traced back to the first census in the 1800s. Back then, there were more racial and ethnic categories respondents could choose from, such as Hokkien, Bugis, and Javanese. But over time, the categories have been simplified to the ‘big four’: Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Others.  “Rather than valuing differences amongst the population, it has served to homogenise social groups and eliminate the diversity and heterogeneity within them,” Laavanya Kathiravelu, assistant professor in sociology at NTU, posits in her 2017 paper Rethinking race: beyond the CMIO categorisations. She points to the promotion of Mandarin as the singular language of the Chinese and the closure of dialect radio stations in the ‘80s as evidence of this.

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